African American

It's very easy for people to dismiss racism and racist people because the word has been so watered down over the years. And trust me friend, this is coming from a fellow man of color who full on recognizes that racism is alive and well in America.

I work in the legal word, and while most of my colleagues tend to be progressive, I work with a lot of well-meaning people in this country who will turn a blind eye to real bigoted attitudes or practices because they've been conditioned by so much mis-use (accidental and purposeful) of the "racism" word that they tend to default to assuming it's the "boy crying wolf," or that someone who is making an accusation of racism is doing so purely for political gain. On the latter especially, we as progressives have some culpability in this for not calling out our colleagues for playing those kinds of games (we actually just saw a lot of it during the Democratic primaries).